


From one life to another

by eternalshiva



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: 100 Drabble Challenge, 100 words per chapter, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Love, Post-Nuclear War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-08 23:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6879052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalshiva/pseuds/eternalshiva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>100 word drabbles based on "The way you said I love you" for my sole survivor and her past and present love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. As a Hello

_Hi honey_. 

The words make her blush every time. No matter how long they’ve been together. His kiss still lingers on her tongue and the simplicity make her giddy. There’s something about the sound of his voice that makes her wonder if he means more than just a simple greeting. Nate shifts in his weight from boot to boot – military issue. He just got back from boot camp and his smile is deafening. 

She wonders, fingers laced with his – they’re standing in the doorway to her dorm room. She smiles back with her heart beating hard under her ribs. _Hello_. 


	2. With a hoarse voice, under the sheets.

Moments. Minutes pass and his lips find hers again and soon they’re under the sheets of her bed. He’s between her legs and she’s between his words, his loving entrancing syllables. Fingertips seek and find each other, desperate for a reunion. 

She missed him and he missed her – time slows to a crawl when sweat drips down his brow unto her chin and he kisses her again and again. 

She’s smiling when he starts whispering names he thought of calling her while he was away with his voice now hoarse with pleasure and hers with laughter under the bed sheets.


	3. A scream

It’s Halloween – time flies and soon Nate is holding Olivia’s hand tightly in his own. Masked villains walk the streets with sweets enticing the monsters that walk the shadows. Her laughter still makes his stomach flip with butterflies and still, the words won’t come out right when he gets the courage to hold down the right moment to say them.

Instead he tells her how he _loves_ haunted houses and how he’d _love_ to take her to one. She smiles, eager to follow him through his wicked idea. Confident, he was sure he’d be fine but he didn’t stop _screaming_.


	4. Over a tea cup

He has to leave again.

The autumn has come and gone but War still calls for his service and he willingly gives his soul piece by piece to it. She’s sitting at her window, staring out the panes of glass while snow drifts down to pile up on the sill. She wraps her hands around her tea cup – the warmth seeping through her trembling hands and she wished she had said _more_.

 _I gotta go_. Okay _. I’ll be back in six months._ Okay. _I’ll write when I can._ Okay. _Can I kiss you?_ Okay.

She wanted to tell him more.


	5. Over a beer bottle

Nate still thought about their good-bye. He’s staring at the bottom of his beer bottle, swirling the amber liquid and he can’t help but feel a bit apprehensive. He hated the way duty instilled its reality between them.

He should have said _more_.

He should have told her he loved her, told her he wanted to marry her if she’d let him. Instead he kissed her warm cheek, said he’d be back soon and she _smiled_. Not the smile that lit her eyes, but a watery smile that screamed her worry.

 _Okay_.

The word itched and ached. Burned him raw.


	6. On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, the late sunlight glowing in your hair.

It wasn’t quite six months yet but shrapnel had sent him home.

His bags drop to the floor of their _new_ apartment when he arrives and watched the dust fill the clean space. He palmed the key and wondered where she’d gone. It didn’t take long to track her down. He looked out the living room window and found her in the park across the street.

For a moment, he was breathless. He’d recall the weirdest detail, later, at their wedding reception. The setting sun glowed against her hair and it was a Tuesday when he said _I love you_.


	7. As a Thank You & 8 As an appology

_Shaun._

Small, slimy and loud – screaming his birth into the world as Olivia cries her joy with exhaustion. She reaches for _their_ son and hears her husband weep with the same amount of wonder and admiration of what this means between them.

 _Welcome, welcome_ – Nate’s voice is shaking and she’s too tired to say anything but smile, still, Nate he turns to her. His fingers lacing with hers and he says I love you over and over. She never thought the words could sound so different when he used them to thank her and apologise for the pain she suffered.


	8. Baking chocolate chip cookies

She smells something weird when she wakes, buried under the blankets of their bed. Boxes still litter their new home in Sanctuary Hills and Shaun gurgles his displeasure at the stench.

Olivia takes him in her arms, stepping over discarded clothing or toys that colour the floors and heads towards the kitchen. She finds Nate cursing at the new oven with smoke billowing out of it. She’s laughing when he turns with a pan of burnt chocolate chip cookies in his mitted hands.

She kissed him, laughing – he blushed, embarrassed. Maybe he should get that robot out of the box.


	9. Not said to me

Nate woke on the couch, cue cards askew on his chest from when he attempted to review his speech for the veteran’s meeting later tomorrow evening. He heard the noise again, a shrill sound that could alarm an old soldier like himself but he knew it was Shaun, laughing and squealing at something his mother was doing.

 _I love you._ _Tickle, tickle! I_ prrt _love_ prrrrrt _you_.

She was blowing raspberries on Shaun’s belly and the boy shrieked again. Olivia hummed a tune between her declarations and Nate felt the warmth of his love for them blossom in his chest.


	10. With a shuddering gasp

She’s running down the street with nothing packed but just fear gripping the very fibers of her being. Nate keeps up behind her – Shaun’s cries urging them to keep fleeing towards safety.

They’re sealed away, below the fallout – the bombs are burning their lives to the ground and she’s still in shock. _A new life_ Vault-Tec keeps repeating and she _believes_ it.

She slips on the vault-suit and kisses her universe goodbye before the machine seals her away a second time. The frost is the last thing she sees when she shudders and gasps _I love you_ through the glass.


	11. When we lay together on the fresh spring grass

She spills out of the cryogenic chamber, gasping for breath as she curls on the floor of the Vault. Her body is frozen, cold and stiff. Her lungs burn from the frost and her fingers are numb with it. She couldn’t feel anything.

She thought of something _warm_ – of their last spring days on the freshly cut grass of their new house, laying there with Shaun watching the sun set.

She shivered as the warmth fought the cold for control and she didn’t think she’d ever get heat to her bones.

Her eyes snap open. _Oh god, they killed him_.


	12. In a letter

When she makes it to Sanctuary, she still can’t understand. An hour ago, the world wasn’t rusted, it wasn’t a pile of dust and rubble and she refuses to acknowledge the obvious passage of time.

The cars litter the streets of her neighbourhood and the houses were barely standing but, despite the abnormality, she finds Codsworth home. She resists the urge to weep when he breaks the news that two hundred and ten years had come and gone.

The world had moved on and she was stuck in the past – she slips the holotape in the pip boy.

 _Hi Honey_.


	13. Whisper

The first days were hard as she adjusted to this new life. Every time Codsworth spoke she felt a deep ache that swallowed her whole. _Nate_ had put him together, programmed him to be fussy, to care for her and Shaun while he recovered from the inkling of war that won.

_Nate_. _Shaun_.

She lingers in the memories, laying on the floor of her decrepit master bedroom. There’s nothing left but her grief and she has no will to rise from these ashes scattering away.

The world is dead and she’s suffocating under its whispers, still ringing in her ears.


End file.
